London 2012: Top 10 weird moments of Olympics opening ceremony
There was no shortage of weird moments at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, courtesy of director Danny Boyle.
1. Hooray for the Industrial Revolution
Huge chimneys emerge from the ground to symbolise the industrial revolution during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games on July 27, 2012 at the Olympic stadium in London. (EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/GettyImages)
2. Creepy baby
A general view of the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on July 27, 2012 in London, England. With giant, creepy baby. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
3. A salute to socialized medicine
Dancers perform in the Great Ormond Street Hospital and NHS scene during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games on July 27, 2012 at the Olympic stadium in London. (FRANCK FIFE/AFP/GettyImages)
4. Mary Poppins vs Voldemort
An actor dressed as Mary Poppins performs in the Great Ormond Street Hospital and NHS scene during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games on July 27, 2012 at the Olympic stadium in London. (LEON NEAL/AFP/GettyImages)
A puppet is displayed in the Great Ormond Street Hospital and NHS scene during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games on July 27, 2012 at the Olympic stadium in London. (FRANCK FIFE/AFP/GettyImages)
5. Tribute to cell-phone hookups
Artists perform during the "Night Out" scene in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games on July 27, 2012 at the Olympic stadium in London. Not pictured: the young couple featured in the opening ceremony storyline, who flirt with each other by cell phone and social media before finally meeting up and making out. (GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/GettyImages)
6. RIP Sid Vicious
Performers pay tribute to British music, including the Sex Pistols, during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on July 27, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
7. The guy who actually invented the internet
A general view is displayed while artists perform during a segment honoring Sir Tim Berners-Lee at the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on July 27, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
8. Peasant women and goats
Artists walk goats as they perform in the British meadow scene during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games on July 27, 2012 at the Olympic stadium in London. (EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/GettyImages)
9. David Beckham fake-drives a boat
David Beckham drives a speedboat carrying the Olympic flame to the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony on July 27, 2012 in London, England. Athletes, heads of state and dignitaries from around the world have gathered in the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony of the 30th Olympiad. London plays host to the Olympic Games which will see 26 sports contested by 10,500 athletes over 17 days of competition. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
10. Queen Elizabeth's 007-style entrance
An actor dressed to resemble Britain's Queen Elizabeth II parachutes over the stadium during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in London on July 27, 2012. (OLIVIER MORIN/AFP/GettyImages)
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Stepping out of Beijing's vast shadow, Danny Boyle didn't flinch in rising to the challenge in London.
For the Oscar-winning director, Beijing's opening ceremony raised the bar so high for Olympic extravaganzas that he saw no point for London to try to rise above the Chinese display of power four years ago.
Operating with a meager budget by comparison, Boyle felt liberated and stamped his own mark on the London Olympics - projecting both Britain's rich industrial history and its eccentricities, relying on creativity and cunning over hard cash.
Whereas Beijing had 2,008 pounding drummers, London's ceremony started with 70 sheep, 12 horses, 10 chickens and nine geese in a quirky farmyard scene.
"There has to be a modesty," Boyle said. "You can't get grandiose with this job because you are following Beijing."
While China invested $40 billion in the Olympics, Britain had less than $15 billion, with around $40 million set aside, in austere times, for the opening ceremony.
"Beijing is something that in a way was great to follow because up to Beijing you can look back and clearly there was an escalation - the shows get bigger and bigger and bigger," Boyle said. "And you can't get bigger than Beijing. That in a way kind of liberated us.
"We thought, 'Great, good, we'll try and do something different. We'll try to use our resources in a different way.' We don't have as many resources and that's fine."
Whereas 5,000 years of Chinese history were distilled into the Beijing ceremony under the direction of Zhang Yimou, Boyle chose to hone in on the last two centuries of Britain's progress. And decline.
The Slumdog Millionaire Academy Award winner had no orders to cut out scenes depicting all that's gritty and grim in the nation despite Olympics Secretary Jeremy Hunt calling it "the biggest single advert for Britain in our history" and previous hosts using the ceremony purely as a glossy marketing tool.
"The danger is ... you feel the pressure of people who have a stake in it and want something out of it - governments," Boyle said. "We started under a Labour government, now a Conservative (led) government. Seb (Coe, the head of the games) has protected us from any kind of interference. We have been allowed to express ourselves."
London's opening ceremony charted how, from being the engine room of the world, a nation in decline after the industrial revolution has tried to reposition itself as technological innovators.
"We are learning our place in the world," Boyle said. "A hundred years ago, we were everything. Obviously the industrial revolution has partly bred that. But there is a change, so I hope there is an innate modesty (in the ceremony) about it as well.
"It's not unspectacular and unambitious. Quite the reverse. But there's a sense of modesty about it. You have to learn your place in the world."
Marco Balich, who created the opening and closing ceremonies to the Turin Winter Olympics in 2006, said the mission for such events is to convey a simple message while not being superficial and still providing a spectacle.
"Beyond the money, every nation expresses his own soul, while producing the ceremony," Balich told The Associated Press. "Beijing wanted to show what a rich, modern and contemporary empire they are ... Britain has expressed its beautiful heritage and cultural history.
"They did in their own way - original, eccentric, different. You don't necessarily need to match anything. You need to look at yourselves and express what you think you are as a nation to the world."
And there is no bigger stage than the Olympics with more than a billion people watching the opening ceremony.
"There is no other thing that can even come close in terms of responsibility of representing a moment, a nation, an era," Balich said.
Kaleidoscopic pageant sets London Games rolling - China Daily
Fireworks explode over the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games July 27, 2012. [Photo/Xinhua]
LONDON - Britain's Queen Elizabeth declared the London Olympics open after playing a cameo role in a dizzying ceremony designed to highlight the grandeur and eccentricities of the nation that invented modern sport.
Children's voices intertwining from the four corners of her United Kingdom ushered in an exuberant historical pageant of meadows, steel mills and megapixels before an audience of 60,000 in the Olympic Stadium and a probable billion television viewers around the globe.
Many of them gasped at the sight of the 86-year-old queen, marking her Diamond Jubilee this year, putting aside royal reserve in a video where she stepped onto a helicopter with James Bond actor Daniel Craig to be carried aloft from Buckingham Palace.
A film clip showed doubles of her and Bond skydiving towards the stadium and, moments later, she made her entrance in person.
"Great Britain was the cradle of modern sport," International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge told reporters. "You invented modern sport in the second half of the 19th century."
To underline the point, Bradley Wiggins, crowned five days earlier as Britain's first winner of the Tour de France and hoping to add more road cycling gold in London, tolled the world's largest tuned bell to begin the ceremony.
David Beckham, the English soccer icon who helped to convince the IOC to grant London the Games, sped down the Thames in a speedboat bearing the Olympic flame on the penultimate leg of a torch relay that inspired many ordinary people around Britain.
And in one moment of simple drama, the stadium fell silent as five giant, incandescent Olympic rings, symbolically forged from British steel mills, were lifted slowly out of the stadium by weather balloons, destined for the stratosphere.
More than 10,000 athletes from 204 countries will compete in 26 sports over 17 days of competition in the only city to have staged the modern Games three times.
Most of them were there for the traditional alphabetical parade of the national teams, not least the athletes from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen competing in their first Olympics since their peoples overthrew autocrats in Arab Spring revolutions.
Brunei and Qatar were led in by their countries' first ever female Olympians and so, along with Saudi Arabia, ended their status as the only countries to exclude women from their teams.
Fireworks explode over the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games July 27, 2012. [Photo/Agencies]
The Olympic cauldron is seen alight as fireworks are set off during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium July 27, 2012. [Photo/Agencies]
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